Thread by @SaamaanyaJ

#SwamiVivekananda #ChicagoSpeech

Today is the 128th Anniversary of Swami Vivekananda’s 1893 Speech in the World Religion Congress. A great turning point in our history.

I dont even know when I learnt of it first. I seem to be knowing it forever. There is a reason for it.

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For us Kannadigas, Swamiji is like a Kannadiga. We think of him of born next door and one who lived in the midst of us. Such is his impact on our minds.

Kamarapukura is how we we refer to Sri. Ramakrishna’s village. We have Kannadised it.

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Literally, every stalwart of Karnataka in the 20th Century was either influenced by Sri. Ramakrishna Paramahamsa or by Sri. Aurobindo. And universally by Swami Vivekananda.

Most small towns have a statue of Swami Vivekananda. Some institution or the other is named after him.

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He continues to be an inspiration for both intellectuals and action oriented groundsmen. Thats a rarity in itself.

Accessible by both the elderly & the young. He is forever young. His youth filled face and a posture of action touches the young. Tragically passing away at 39.

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There is another reason why Swami Vivekananda is so close to us. Alaginga Perumal, a Srivaishnavite from Chikkamagalur, Karnataka, played a key role in his travelling to Chicago.

Thus, Sri. Perumal has immortalised himself in the history with his cameo.

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But the real impact of Swami Vivekananda was on the common man. I will narrate this dimension through my experiences with my Grand Father.

A simple man, my Grand Father was a great story teller. He always told the story of Swamiji - that everybody knew but in a special way.

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After his 70s, my Grand Father became a reflective man & would sit anywhere & tell stories. Often, they were told to anybody front of him. Sometimes, they were to the visitors. At other times, to family members.

But most of the times, he was telling those stories to himself.

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One such story was about Swami Vivekananda. He would start this from Vivekananda’s early days but would quickly move to the last days of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and his urging Vivekananda to spread the message to the Universe.

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Gradually, it would slow-down in pace and become elaborate, gaining depth.

He would narrate all incidents about his journey to the South, his difficult experiences, Alasinga Perumal’s help, travel to Kanyakumari, subsequent ship travel…

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…Receiving help from the unknown, divine interventions, finally delivering the speech and then the return.

This alone would not have made a difference.

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The story told to himself, thereby to others, became a very personal one. It was a story told standing next to Vivekananda at each moment. My grand father was virtually travelling along with Vivekananda through the stories - one who he never met in his life time.

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Essentially, my grand father was telling the story of the Civilization. Not just that. He himself became the Civilization. It was a story told by the Civilization for the Civilization to the Civilization itself.

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It had the tenor of being the Subject, Object as well as the Performer - it was all one. The Performer and the Performance was one - just as a Yagna is.

That is the reason he told this story hundreds of times over 10+ years when I saw him.

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It didn’t matter who was in front of it. It didn’t matter if they had heard it yesterday or even just a few hours before. Each time, it had the same content, the same sequence, the same narration, the same tone and the same flow.

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Stop him in between, he would allow the digression, complete it, return back to the story exactly at the same place & continue exactly the same way he did previously.

It was fun for us children to indulge in this disruption play & experience the magical game of Continuity.

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In this, Vivekananda’s angst became that of my grand father. As did that of Alasinga Perumal.

He was going through the angst of the Civilization itself. I did not realise it then.

How did this happen? He was not an intellectual, neither a scholar, nor a political person.

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After many years, I realise that this is how is Bharateeya Parampara nurtures and creates responses. Quietly but Definitely. Its a socio-cultural process. Its not that we do not have the Socio-Political response. But we have nurtured very complex Socio-Cultural processes.

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Thought flowed from the Genius to the Community. The Community engages and absorbs. It impacts different people differently based on the Samskaras. Some of them, the bards, become an unconscious, sub-conscious carriers of that thought into the future generations.

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We protect the Seeds and pass to next generations. The Seeds only wait for the right ground, right time, right context for it to again become a flowering Tree. Thus we save a million seeds, and they become Trees to create many more seeds.

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The Protection of the Seed is the Community responsibility. The Ground is the Classical - the responsibility of the State.

We do have Seeds. Our Ancestors have protected and set it in the Flow. It is all the there.

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My Grand Father will be born somewhere else in some other Form and would be another set of Civilizational Stories, without knowing. The ones who allow the Flow to pass through them dont carry the Ego of being the passers.

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Its time for us to now create that Ground - where all seeds can come and become bigger Trees. To create more Seeds.

And find those bards and hand them over more Seeds.

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Growing up, reading more about Swami Vivekananda, his seminal contributions to every aspect of ‘Purushartha’, to create a Vision for Bharatavarsha that takes us another 500 years into the Future - now I understand the importance of Swami Vivekananda.

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Now, I understand why my Grand Father told his story almost like a stream of Consciousness. Why he became a Medium for it - without knowing he was being one.

Now, I understand how Bharatavarsha functions.

🙏🏼